June 18, 2007

Wildflowers and Bad News for Bears

Back from South Carolina, I walked down the driveway this morning to look at wildflowers. But part of what I saw is bad news for bears--and for me.

The wet spring has meant profuse waxy white yucca blossoms...

... and the American vetch is blooms along the driveway, together with ...

tall (a/k/a one-sided) penstemon.

M. loves to see abundant yellow sweetclover, which seems to move from place to place each year.

This cobweb is catching "cotton" from the cottonwood trees along Hardscrabble Creek.

But the bad news is that the wet spring seems to have produced an outbreak of "plum pockets," a fungus disease that destroys the fruit. I did not see a single good-looking plum developing. Normally the bears get most of these wild plums--I collect maybe one bowl full. But this year they won't. Maybe they can make up for them with feral apples.